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Estimated time of infection vs. confirmed infections

Following the ideas from Tomas Pueyo's Medium post "Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now" [1], we assume the average time from infection to death at 23 days [2]. The data is pulled from the COVID-19 Data Repository by Johns Hopkins CSSE [3] every hour. Countries with a minimnum of 1000 confirmed cases and 40 confirmed deaths are included in this analysis.

The time from infection to death is equal to the incubation period plus the time from symptoms to death. This is used to estimate the time of the infections that lead to the observed deaths. We take the last fatality rate per country (total_cases/total_deaths) to estimate the number of infections that are responsible for the observed deaths.

In the figures below, you can observe successive waves of infections (dashed), detections (black) and deaths (red) for each country. The upper panel shows the absolute number of events. The dashed lines show the estimated number of infections. The lower panel shows the normalized number of events. Here the temporal delay between the waves and the relative change between each other can be observed.

[1] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

[2] https://github.com/midas-network/COVID-19/tree/master/parameter_estimates/2019_novel_coronavirus

[3] https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/tree/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series

US
Brazil
Mexico
India
United Kingdom
Italy
France
Russia
Germany
Spain
Iran
Colombia
Argentina
South Africa
Peru
Poland
Indonesia
Turkey
Ukraine
Czechia
Belgium
Canada
Chile
Romania
Portugal
Hungary
Ecuador
Netherlands
Iraq
Pakistan
Sweden
Philippines
Bolivia
Egypt
Bulgaria
Switzerland
Austria
Morocco
Bangladesh
Japan
Tunisia
Slovakia
Greece
Saudi Arabia
Guatemala
Panama
Israel
Croatia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Lebanon
Jordan
Serbia
China
Ireland
Honduras
Moldova
Slovenia
Georgia
Paraguay
Lithuania
North Macedonia
Azerbaijan
Armenia
Dominican Republic
Burma
Kazakhstan
Algeria
Nepal
Costa Rica
Ethiopia
Afghanistan
Denmark
Libya
West Bank and Gaza
Belarus
Albania
Nigeria
Sudan
El Salvador
Kenya
Latvia
Kosovo
South Korea
Oman
Kyrgyzstan
Zimbabwe
Venezuela
United Arab Emirates
Malaysia
Kuwait
Zambia
Montenegro
Syria
Malawi
Senegal
Australia
Finland
Congo (Kinshasa)
Mozambique
Estonia
Uruguay
Luxembourg
Eswatini
Ghana
Norway
Uzbekistan
Cameroon
Sri Lanka
Angola
Bahrain
Jamaica
Namibia
Mauritania
Botswana
Cuba
Malta
Uganda
Belize
Lesotho
Madagascar
Rwanda
Qatar
Haiti
Cyprus
Cote d'Ivoire
Hong Kong
Cabo Verde
Burkina Faso
Andorra
Guinea

Ahead of the curve

Some countries start testing the population earlier in the outbreak than others. The time delay between the wave of deaths and the wave of confirmed cases is indicative for how early a country is detecting new cases ahead of the increase of deaths. Earlier detection means a better chances for successful isolation of an infected person and treatment of the desease.

We measure the distance of the maximum of cumulative deaths and new deaths to the number of infections to estimate the progression of the infection across countries.

If, in the early phase of the infection wave, the number of deaths rises faster than the number of confirmed cases, the distance drops, indicating that

A comparison of countries with respect to their mean time for reponse is presented below.

To determine the above values, we plot the number of confirmed cases (solid black lines) and the number of deaths (dashed black lines). From this, we measure the distance of the day of maximum deaths (dashed red lines) to the day of confirmed cases at this y-value.

The distance is indicative for how fast the humber of confirmed cases increases comapred to the increase of the number of deaths.

US
Brazil
Mexico
India
United Kingdom
Italy
France
Russia
Germany
Spain
Iran
Colombia
Argentina
South Africa
Peru
Poland
Indonesia
Turkey
Ukraine
Czechia
Belgium
Canada
Chile
Romania
Portugal
Hungary
Ecuador
Netherlands
Iraq
Pakistan
Sweden
Philippines
Bolivia
Egypt
Bulgaria
Switzerland
Austria
Morocco
Bangladesh
Japan
Tunisia
Slovakia
Greece
Saudi Arabia
Guatemala
Panama
Israel
Croatia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Lebanon
Jordan
Serbia
China
Ireland
Honduras
Moldova
Slovenia
Georgia
Paraguay
Lithuania
North Macedonia
Azerbaijan
Armenia
Dominican Republic
Burma
Kazakhstan
Algeria
Nepal
Costa Rica
Ethiopia
Afghanistan
Denmark
Libya
West Bank and Gaza
Belarus
Albania
Nigeria
Sudan
El Salvador
Kenya
Latvia
Kosovo
South Korea
Oman
Kyrgyzstan
Zimbabwe
Venezuela
United Arab Emirates
Malaysia
Kuwait
Zambia
Montenegro
Syria
Malawi
Senegal
Australia
Finland
Congo (Kinshasa)
Mozambique
Estonia
Uruguay
Luxembourg
Eswatini
Ghana
Norway
Uzbekistan
Cameroon
Sri Lanka
Angola
Bahrain
Jamaica
Namibia
Mauritania
Botswana
Cuba
Malta
Uganda
Belize
Lesotho
Madagascar
Rwanda
Qatar
Haiti
Cyprus
Cote d'Ivoire
Hong Kong
Cabo Verde
Burkina Faso
Andorra
Guinea